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Mental health disorders are among the leading worldwide causes of disease and long-term disability. This issue has a long and painful history of gradual de-stigmatization of patients, coinciding with humanization of therapeutic approaches. What are the current trends in Russia regarding this issue and in what ways is it similar to and different from Western countries? IQ.HSE provides an overview of this problem based on research carried out by Svetlana Kolpakova.

On September 5, Laurie Manchester, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, presented her paper on voluntary repatriation of Russians from China to the Soviet Union between 1935 and 1960. The presentation was part of the research seminar, ‘Boundaries of History’, held regularly by the Department of History at HSE University in St. Petersburg. HSE News Service spoke with Laurie Manchester about her research interests, collaborating with HSE faculty members, and the latest workshop.

Dr. Sabyasachi Tripathi, from Kolkata, India, is a new research fellow at HSE University. He will be working at the Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies of the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

The article describes and analyzes the legislative politics of revolutionary regimes in Russia in 1917-1918. The author aims to demonstrate the political meaning of the form of early Soviet legislation and its legitimizing effect. The revolutionary legislators often used specific language in the new laws as a vehicle of legitimacy, i.e. to make the people comply. The two main types of legal language used by the Bolsheviks can be interpreted from the perspective of different types of legitimacy. The revolutionary strategy used propagandistic legislation, written in the language of lay people, which urged them to act according to the new law. It can be seen as a request for acts of the people to legitimize the soviets. On the contrary, the traditional strategy employed old bureaucratic means of writing and distributing legislation to the local soviets. The language used by this strategy was closed to the understanding of a lay audience and implied traditions of obeying the law written in familiar legal language, which in turn implied rational/legal legitimacy. The second strategy had already become dominant after the first months of the Bolshevik revolution. This observation demonstrates that from the very beginning of their rule, Soviet leaders approached legislative policy from a technocratic point of view, which determined the further development of Soviet legal theory and practice.

The subject matter of the present article is the analysis of development of legal rules laying down the controllers' subsidiary liability in case of business entity's insolvency and its inability to satisfy creditors' claims. The article covers the issues concerning the grounds of the controllers' liability, the content of the offence committed by the controllers, the correlation of the legal rules laying down subsidiary liability.

This article is devoted to the legitimation and application of the standards of ex post and ex ante by courts and the executive authorities in the sphere of competition regulation. The postulates of ex post and ex ante are considered as legal principles. The principle of ex post is intended solely for judicial and administrative application; it has a deontological framework; it assumes that the legality of the activity of economic entities is assessed only on the basis of positive legal criteria in terms of the subjective rights violated; it is limited to a particular case. The traditional approach to the principle of ex post limits the scope of its application on the subjects and excessively expands its objects. The postulate of ex ante has a utilitarian basis which assumes the assessment of the application of relevant rules in the future. One of the main aims of the article is to refute the common view of lawyers and economists that a legislator applies principle of ex ante not being bound by principle of ex post, while it is the other way around for the courts and the executive authorities. The principle of ex ante may be applied not only in the process of the creation of new rules but also at the application stage for existing rules on economic competition. This is justified because the arguments of the courts and the executive authorities about a refusal to take into account the consequences of a decision in a particular case are not convincing.

The article is devoted to a particular form of freedom of assembly — the right to counter-demonstrate. The author underlines the value of this right as an element of democratic society, but also acknowledges the risk of violent actions among participants of opposing demonstrations. Due to this risk, the government may adopt adequate measures restricting the right to counter-demonstrate, certain types of which are analyzed in this paper.

This article analyzes the usage of legislation as a legal source in the Russian Empire through the phenomenon of the publication of law. The author argues that the absence of separation of executive, legislative and court powers had definite negative effects for lawmaking and enforcement. The legislative politics of Russian emperors could be analyzed using Jürgen Habermas‘ concept of ―representative publicness‖ (representative öffentlichkeit): to a large extent, the tsars considered law as both an assertion of authority and a means of governing. Their actions towards strengthening legality in the state (i.e. the compulsory publication of legislation) were in essence symbolic or theatrical. In fact, since the separation of laws from executive acts did not exist in imperial Russia, the legislation was published (or stayed unpublished) exclusively for state administrators. The conflict in conceptions of legality between state and civil actors in the second half of the nineteenth century was not of a merely political nature. The article demonstrates that there was a public demand for publication of legislation; insufficient accessibility of legal information negatively influenced social and economic development in imperial Russia.

Development of standards of international controllability is reviewed in the article. Institutional approach is applied to development of international legal regime of Energy Charter. Definition of controllability is connected to development of international standards of dispute settlement, which are described in the article in detail. In connection with controllability, Russian interest, defense of investment in European Union and ecological investment encouragement, is reviewed in the article.